A shrubbery or two

You might have thought I would stop blogging about Tassie eventually.
You'd be wrong...

Tassie wildlife

Exhibit A - Tassie Devil:

Exhibit B - Cape Byron Goose:

Exhibit C - Eagle with its next meal:

Exhibit D - The Tasmanian Hiking Wombat (passing us on the trail back from Cradle Mountain):

Exhibit E - The Big Penguin at the town of Penguin:

with friend:

Cradle Mountain

So back on the trail then...

Cradle Mountain is an amazing walk, my favourite so far. The thing I liked about it so much was the tricky but very rewarding climb at the end. You start off by going to the other side of Dove Lake - this is the popular tourist walk and is mainly decked out with a nice wooden walkway and lovely views.

From there you leave the easy path and head off up the first of a number of steep rises for about an hour.

Then there were about two relentless hours of rough ground to cover:

And then this ridiculous pile of rocks rears its head:

One hour of scrambling up huge square boulders. That post with the orange tip marks the trail - not that you would know. It's a general guide but then you have to figure your own way to the next marker. I took this shot after we had made it up that bit so it's looking down the mountain, but you basically have to climb these enormous boulders until you reach the summit. Pretty exhausting and mentally difficult as you have to think how you are going to make it up in some places. There were a lot of people who we passed on the way at this point who were giving up either because they were too tired and realised they had another four hours of walking to get back home or because they just couldn't figure out how to get past certain points. The weather was changing at this altitude too - it was jumper and jacket weather down on the lake but up here there were freak patches of summer snow still on the ground in places kept cool by always being in the shadows of these huge rocks and the cloud was coming in and chilling things down considerably. The constant climbing though meant that we were roasting and stripping down to one layer.

And the summit - nothing but rocks below and cloud all around! But it was totally worth it. Now for the four hour trek back!

Rest day

So I was going to be all soothing and holidayish and take you on a photo trip up to the mountains today but then OOPS I got drunk all of a sudden but that's holidayish, right?

The story is this.

The fridge karked it yesterday - I was so restrained not to bitch about it, no? So I've been buying ice in the interim, and after two weeks of living out of an esky, what do you know? I'm doing it again!

But today I accidentally bought too much than required. Of course, logically, this means I have to get rid of some ice. But there's something about my upbringing by people who endured a childhood marked by rationing during the Second World War that won't allow me to waste the ice. So I am using it in bacardi and grapefuit cocktails. As one does in such an emergency.

So now I am incapable of climbing mountains let alone leading anyone else up one. And you thought you would be seeing Cradle Mountain today. Well, can I just say I think it's important to be flexible when you're travelling.

Pack your bags...

Needless to say the past couple of weeks camping in Tasmania have been unreal. I'm still not sure why we came back - I guess there's money to be earnt and "real life" to face, whatever that is. In my opinion life never feels more real than when you are touring the countryside and sleeping under the stars. As we drove up to the ferry to go back to the mainland it was so tempting just to chuck a U-turn and head back to the mountains. There is so much to see in Tassie and we took so many photos that I couldn't possibly inflict them all on you at once. So instead I will drag the torture out, submitting you to a handful of photos each day. So what better time to start a photo-tour of Tassie than right now. By the way, I would give these to you in chronological order, but of course, that's just more organisation skills than I am willing to use while I'm still on holiday. Also, I can't remember where all these shots were taken as some were hurried snaps from the side of the road. Just flow with it - this is a holiday after all.

Hope you are enjoying your holiday so far. Put up the tent and get a good night's sleep because tomorrow we're heading up Cradle Mountain.